


The North Star

by GoTdorK (TightTights)



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Ficlet, Gen, GoT Season 7 finale, Minor Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth, POV Jaime, Self-Reflection, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-28
Updated: 2017-08-28
Packaged: 2018-12-20 23:01:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11931156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TightTights/pseuds/GoTdorK
Summary: Jaime reflects on his decision.





	The North Star

**Author's Note:**

> This ficlet is an expression of thoughts/contemplation on Jaime's character.

_Fuck loyalty!_

The sound of Brienne’s voice booms over the thundering gallop of his mount. He tugs the reins, slowing the beast to a gradual halt along Kingsroad. He looks about, then up at the stars peek through the drape of dusk and overcast covering the rolling hillside. A wolf bellows in the distance, and his horse stamps with agitation.

He realizes with chagrin that it was merely his memory, but she may have well been shouting in his ear. If only she were not a figment now. Her utterance stung him like a bucket of ice water poured over his head, drawn straight from the White Knife. It was the last thing he thought he would ever hear from the lips of the infuriatingly honorable wench.

It was naked proof of how much circumstances had changed since their journey together to King’s Landing. Since he sent her away to fulfill her mad, solemn purpose. Since she stood before him again, accomplished in that purpose. The golden pommel of Oathkeeper still resting by her hip affronted him now, its mere presence holding him under interrogation. What had been his purpose? What had he accomplished since?

Would it even matter when every bygone grudge, lingering scheme, and burdensome duty died away in the face of catastrophe, heralded by the living corpse given over to his Queen’s inspection in the Dragonpit?

His Queen? _The_ Queen.

He put forth his best to defend the Crown, he might answer the sword. Yet as he watched the undead writhe and flail in service to his master, he recoiled not just at its ghastly visage, but for the glimpse of his own grisly prognosis. If not to this Night King, then to a bitter, cold monster all the same.

_Fuck loyalty._

His throat bobbed, Brienne’s words going down like a draught of bitter medicine. It shocked him that he responded to it, and the subsequent conclusion that only a sick man would. He had scarcely the idea he was sick, with the onset of his fever so gradual, so subtle, he was unaware until it broke, sudden and swift.

Swifter still, he recognized with revulsion its noxious source, who rarely stood but a breath apart, through all his days. The malady struck when he caught the familiar gleam in his beloved sister’s eyes, the look he knew well from when they were children. A look as though the Seven Hells were about to burst forth into the realm of men through those fissures. Instead, there was only space enough for an insidious stream of pestilence to seep through, overcoming the wits and body of anyone who crossed her.

Now, as Queen, she seemed resolved the mortal realm itself had crossed her. The cruel gleams embedded as a permanent fixture, blinding her, and condemning to memory when it used to be just them. Only them.

Now, she is but a disease.  Blighting the people and lands who serve her, with just as little reason to speak to.

He sighs. A puff of frost roils past his chapped lips.

_Fuck loyalty._

He had last looked at Cersei and mourned his birthright, his home of Casterly Rock, and his unborn children. He had last looked at Brienne, the distorted reflection of himself in the trappings of a noble giantess, frightened for her own life, lands, and kin. He imagined Cersei, enjoying the safety of a warm bed and regular warm meals, while the cold, hungry souls of her soldiers were ripped from their haggard bodies. He imagined Brienne, starving and half-frozen herself, fighting to her death against teeming hordes of those _things_. Oathkeeper would swing until her last breath, glinting blue in the snow, like the sapphire waters of Tarth. Would she not think of them and the warm sun as she lay dying in a frozen, foreign land?

And what would he be doing, while black blades pierced through her sandy flesh? Would he remain neutral and idle in King’s Landing? His fight in having to stay his hand against insults from a peacocking Ironborn, and his pervasive stench of whale shit? Watch as this waterlogged interloper wove the most transparent and hideous love song ever composed to woo a sitting monarch? Keep down his latest meal when she had the gall to appear flattered by the brash overtures of a lord who was little more than an overweening pirate?

He must have been positively delirious with fever, else he would have cut down the boor at the first provocation.

_Fuck loyalty._

The wolf howls again, and his mount stamps again and whinnies beneath him, impatient. He, however, cannot yet bring himself to spur its flanks. Flakes of snow dance around him. The road ahead lay darkness and frost. A path toward a desperate fight alongside a pack of wolves, under the rule of dragons. It seemed absurd, as it ever was, that a lion would choose to wade in among the very creatures he loathed.

What if the bastard and his mad queen failed to halt their advance? What if, instead of breaking upon Winterfell and the Vale, the tide of death overswept them all and poured down the Neck, across their throats?

A wiser man might instead flee south. His father might have advised a retreat south, if only to bide time and consolidate resources. Though he had no friends in the Reach or Dorne, he might still weather the onslaught of Winter with better odds than with Targaryens and Starks. He might have delayed their family’s extinction and taken up refuge, as his sister and her Ironborn would-be consort had, on some defensible island. Dragonstone, perhaps. _Or Tarth_ , his brain rudely interjects.

Yet as he stares down the empty, sullen road, he remains rooted, facing the North along the Kingsroad. He hardly remembers divesting himself of his regalia, mounting his horse, and riding out this far.

What if, her impeccable soul forsaken by gods, she were called back from her grave into service as a loyal thrall of the dead? Could he remain here, or flee? He bares his teeth at the wench and her eyes, their bewitching blue corrupted with an icy touch.

_Fuck loyalty!_

What was his beloved sister imagining now? Strangely, he could picture her narrow-minded fantasy quite well. Robed in black, immeasurably pleased as her gaze swept across a kingdom reduced to little more than snow and ash. Was that really the kind of world she wished to bequeath to their children, if she survived to do so?

When did she stop thinking beyond herself, beyond the walls of the Red Keep? Had she ever, when all the while he fancied them as one spirit sharing in two bodies?

He grips the reins, but makes no move to spur his horse. He shakes his head, fighting off the shiver seeping into his muscles. The gold of his right hand glimmers in his eye, a stark reminder that no, his was one body. One mind. His spirit belonged to him, and him alone.

A wry smile crosses his lips, and a burst of fire surging in his veins throws back the cold.

Wasn’t that what you were put on this earth to tell me, wench?

_Fuck loyalty._

He had no loyalty to the stars-- but he trusted them. Trusted them to always be in their appointed place, as they were yesterday, and as they will be tomorrow, and every time the daylight fades, and darkness falls. He looks up to them now, as he looked up to her in that steaming bath.

Then, he dips his chin as though in silent prayer. Brienne, the Maid of Tarth, the last living vestige of his self-respect, his honor, refusing to fade. His one constant, this stubborn ally, fixed in place while the universe swirls around her. South, North, living, dead. He could make sense of it, if only could find her in the void.

So long as he found her, he could find his way forward.

_I trust you._

He spurs his horse into a steady gallop.

_Fuck loyalty. I trust you._


End file.
